MSP Backup Solutions – What Actually Protects Your Clients

Updated: May 2026

Three things happened since January that shift how you should evaluate any backup solution for MSPs.

Veeam raised prices again. A 4–8% increase hit January 2026, the second consecutive year of hikes. VUL licensing got more expensive across the board, and MSPs running large seat counts felt it immediately. If you're budgeting Veeam for 2027, plan for the same pattern.

Datto killed High Watermark billing. In December 2025, Kaseya quietly ended the billing model that charged MSPs based on peak storage – even after clients deleted data. It took years of MSP backlash to get here. Alongside the billing change, Datto dropped prices roughly 10% in January 2026. That's worth acknowledging, but it doesn't undo the proprietary lock-in baked into the hardware and cloud ecosystem.

Slide raised $70M in Series B funding. Announced March 2026 – and the name behind it matters. Slide was founded by the original Datto founder, re-entering the MSP backup market with month-to-month contracts and a cloud-first architecture. It's too early to evaluate the product, but the funding and the founder signal real competition ahead.

The 5 Best MSP Backup Solutions Compared

Here's what actually matters when you're picking a backup platform: what it costs, what it locks you into, and what happens when a client needs a restore at 2 AM on a Saturday.

No single vendor wins every column. Your choice depends on your team size, your clients' RTO expectations, and how much you value being able to leave. Our MSP stack audit guide walks through how to benchmark backup costs alongside the rest of your tooling.

Veeam Backup & Replication

Veeam has the broadest workload coverage in the MSP backup market. Physical servers, VMs, cloud workloads, NAS, M365, Kubernetes – if it exists, Veeam probably backs it up. That breadth is why it dominates at scale.

VUL licensing starts around $250–450 per workload per year, but that's just the license. You're providing the infrastructure – servers, storage, networking, monitoring. For most MSPs, the real TCO runs 2–3x the license fee once you account for hardware, power, and engineer hours. The 4–8% annual price increases (two years running now) compound that. Below 500 seats, the per-workload cost and infrastructure overhead eat into margins fast.

Hidden cost: Infrastructure overhead. The license is the down payment. The servers, storage, and engineer time are the mortgage.

Best for: MSPs with dedicated backup engineers and 500+ seats.

Datto SIRIS (Kaseya)

Datto built its reputation on appliance simplicity. Ship the box, plug it in, local backups start. When a client's server dies, you spin up a VM on the appliance and they're back in under an hour. That local recovery speed is genuinely hard to beat.

Post-Kaseya, the picture is more nuanced. The 10% price cut and the end of High Watermark billing are real concessions – but they came after years of MSP pushback, not goodwill. Kaseya's strategy of bundling Datto into its ecosystem (Autotask, IT Glue, VSA) means your backup platform increasingly ties you to their entire stack.

The lock-in runs three layers deep. Proprietary hardware – you can't run SIRIS on your own servers. Proprietary backup format – you can't restore to AWS, Azure, or GCP without Datto's cloud. Ecosystem bundling – the more Kaseya products you run, the harder it is to leave any of them.

Hidden cost: Proprietary cloud egress. Restoring outside Datto's ecosystem means friction and fees that weren't in the sales pitch.

Best for: MSPs who want appliance simplicity and don't mind the Kaseya ecosystem long-term.

Acronis Cyber Protect Cloud

Acronis has held G2's #1 spot for server backup three years running. The base platform starts around $85 per workload per year – noticeably cheaper than Veeam or Datto at face value.

The "at face value" part matters. Acronis sells in packs: Advanced Backup, Advanced Security, Advanced DR, Advanced Management. By the time you've stacked the packs most MSPs actually need – DR and advanced security at minimum – the per-workload price is considerably higher than $85. The convergence play (backup + EDR + patch management in one console) does reduce tool sprawl. Just model the full pack pricing before you commit.

Hidden cost: Pack stacking. The base price gets you in the door. The packs you actually need get you to the real number.

Best for: MSPs who want backup and security under one roof and will model pack pricing upfront.

Comet Backup

Comet targets MSPs who want control without Veeam's complexity. At $49 per server per month for hosted, or a self-hosted option with no contracts, it's priced for operations that can't justify enterprise-tier licensing.

The BYO storage model is Comet's strongest differentiator. You pick your storage target – AWS S3, Wasabi, Backblaze B2, Azure Blob – and Comet handles the backup logic. You control storage costs independently from backup licensing, and you're not locked into a proprietary cloud.

The trade-off: you own the infrastructure. Uptime, patching, scaling – that's on your team. If your self-hosted instance goes down at midnight, there's no vendor answering the phone. For MSPs with strong technical teams and 50–200 endpoints, that works. Past that without dedicated ops staff, the burden compounds.

Hidden cost: You're the ops team. Comet's price is low because you're absorbing infrastructure responsibility.

Best for: Technically strong MSPs who want maximum control and predictable costs.

Axcient x360Recover

Axcient sells exclusively to MSPs – no direct-to-business channel competing with you. Their pooled storage model gives you a flat monthly fee with storage shared across all your clients, making billing predictable.

The specs: sub-1-hour RTO guarantee and 15-minute RPO, backed by chain-free backup technology that eliminates backup chain corruption issues. For MSPs where recovery speed is the primary selling point to clients, those numbers matter.

Annual contracts are required – 12 months minimum. The pooled storage model has overage charges if data growth exceeds your allocation. Model your growth trajectory before you sign, or you'll eat surprise charges in month eight.

Hidden cost: Pool overage charges. Predictable billing until data growth outpaces your pool.

Best for: MSPs who sell on recovery speed and want predictable billing without managing infrastructure.

The Hidden Costs Nobody Talks About

Every vendor on this list has costs that don't show up in the pricing table. Three categories hit MSPs hardest.

Egress fees. A 500GB restore from AWS S3 costs $45–60 in egress fees. One client, one incident. Scale it: 50 clients each needing 500GB DR restores – $2,250–3,000 in egress alone. Wasabi charges $0 for egress, which is why so many Comet and Veeam MSPs use it as a storage target.

Vendor lock-in mechanics. Lock-in is three things working together. Proprietary backup formats – your data can't be restored outside the vendor's tools. Proprietary hardware – you can't run the software on your own servers. Ecosystem bundling – your backup is tied to your RMM, PSA, and documentation tools. Leave one, rip out the whole stack. These aren't accidents. They're retention strategies.

Real TCO formula. Before you sign anything:

License + infrastructure + storage + egress + switching cost + ops overhead = actual annual cost

Most MSPs skip the last three. That's where vendors hide margin.

RTO and RPO – Vendor Promises vs. Reality

RPO (Recovery Point Objective): How much data you can afford to lose. A 15-minute RPO means backups run every 15 minutes – worst case, you lose 15 minutes of work.

RTO (Recovery Time Objective): How fast you're back online after a failure. A 1-hour RTO means clients are operational within 60 minutes of the incident.

Here's the reality check most sales engineers skip: cloud-only recovery of a 2TB server over a 100 Mbps connection takes 45–55 hours. That's physics, not a vendor limitation. Sub-1-hour RTO for large workloads requires local recovery hardware – an appliance or on-prem server with backup data already staged.

If a vendor promises sub-1-hour RTO without local recovery hardware, ask how. The math doesn't work for workloads over a few hundred gigabytes on typical MSP internet connections.

Microsoft 365 Backup – Why It's Not Optional

Microsoft's shared responsibility model is clear if you read the fine print: they guarantee uptime of the service, not the safety of your data. Deleted items disappear permanently after 93 days. There's no native point-in-time restore. If a client's admin accidentally purges a SharePoint site or a bad actor encrypts their mailbox, Microsoft won't recover it. A managed security service provider handles the threat detection side, but backup is what saves you when prevention fails.

That makes M365 backup a requirement, not a nice-to-have.

Veeam (via Backup for Microsoft 365), Axcient (x360Cloud), and Comet all handle M365 backup natively. Datto requires SaaS Protection as a separate add-on. Acronis includes it in their Advanced Backup pack.

If M365 backup is critical to your stack – and for most MSPs, it should be – verify that it's included in your tier, not buried in an add-on with separate billing.

Notable Mentions

Four vendors that didn't make the main comparison but are worth tracking.

Slide raised $70M in Series B (March 2026), built by the original Datto founder. Month-to-month contracts, cloud-first. Early product, but the funding and pedigree make it a real contender by late 2026.

N-able Cove – cloud-first, lightweight agent. Integrates cleanly if you're already in the N-able ecosystem. Small enough footprint to run on older client hardware.

MSP360 – BYO cloud storage with multi-tenancy. Similar to Comet's philosophy but with a more managed interface for larger operations.

Unitrends – agent-based all-in-one. Backup, DR, and continuity in a single platform. Less flexible than best-of-breed, but simpler to operate.

How to Choose – A Decision Framework

Skip the feature matrix. Three questions get you to the right answer faster.

1. Do you want to own the infrastructure or pay someone to run it?
Self-hosted (Veeam, Comet) gives you control and typically lower per-unit costs. Managed (Datto, Axcient) gives you simplicity and a vendor to call at 2 AM. Neither is wrong – it depends on your team's technical depth and how many clients you're supporting.

2. What RTO does your client base actually need?
If sub-1-hour recovery is in your SLAs, you need local recovery hardware. That means appliances (Datto, Axcient) or on-prem servers running Veeam or a self-hosted platform. Cloud-only recovery works for smaller workloads and longer RTO windows.

3. How much do you value portability?
Proprietary formats and hardware lock you in. Open formats and BYO storage let you move. The switching cost from a locked-in vendor averages 60–90 days of migration work per 100 endpoints. If you think you might change platforms in the next three years, portability saves you real money and real time. The OpenMSP community maps 155+ commercial tools to open-source alternatives – it's worth browsing before you commit to any vendor.

FAQ

What is the best backup solution for MSPs in 2026?

There's no single best. Veeam offers the broadest workload coverage for large MSPs with dedicated engineers. Datto SIRIS provides the simplest appliance-based recovery. Comet gives you the most control and portability with BYO storage. Axcient delivers the strongest RTO guarantees. Your best option depends on team size, client RTO requirements, and how much lock-in you're willing to accept.

How much does MSP backup software cost?

Pricing ranges from $49/server/month (Comet hosted) to $600+/month per appliance (Datto SIRIS). Most MSPs spend $85–450 per workload per year on licensing alone. Add infrastructure, storage, and egress fees for the real number – typically 22–38% above the quoted license cost.

What is the difference between RTO and RPO?

RPO (Recovery Point Objective) is how much data you can lose – determined by backup frequency. RPO of 15 minutes means you lose at most 15 minutes of data. RTO (Recovery Time Objective) is how fast you're back online after a failure. Sub-1-hour RTO for large workloads typically requires local recovery hardware, not cloud-only restores. For a deeper breakdown of how to set these targets by client tier, see the RTO vs RPO guide.

Is Microsoft 365 backup necessary?

Yes. Microsoft's shared responsibility model means they keep the service running but don't protect your data. Deleted items are gone after 93 days with no native point-in-time restore. A disgruntled employee or ransomware attack can destroy years of email and SharePoint data that Microsoft won't recover.

Vendor lock-in isn't a pricing model. It's a strategy to make leaving more expensive than staying – even when staying stops making sense. Every year you spend on a proprietary platform adds to the switching cost. Every proprietary backup format makes your data less portable. The MSPs who'll have the strongest margins in three years are the ones choosing portability now, before the switching cost makes the decision for them.

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